Electronic devices, including portable electronic devices, have gained widespread use and may provide a variety of functions including, for example, telephonic, electronic messaging and other personal information manager (PIM) application functions. Portable electronic devices include, for example, several types of mobile stations such as simple cellular telephones, smart telephones, wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers with wireless capabilities.
Portable electronic devices such as PDAs or smart telephones are generally intended for handheld use and ease of portability. Many such devices communicate via a connection to one or more wireless local area networks (WLAN). Examples of a wireless local area network include but are not limited to any of a variety of networks that are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standards (generally known in the art as Wi-Fi™ standards).
Many portable electronic devices provide a visual indication to represent or characterize received signal strength of various in-range wireless local area networks. This Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) is defined in IEEE 802.11-2012 as follows: “The allowed values for the RSSI parameter are in the range from 0 to RSSI maximum. This parameter is a measure by the PHY of the energy observed at the antenna used to receive the current PPDU. RSSI shall be measured during the reception of the PLCP preamble. RSSI is intended to be used in a relative manner, and it shall be a monotonically increasing function of the received power.” (“PHY” is an abbreviation for the physical layer of the OSI model. An instantiation of PHY connects a link layer device (often called MAC as an abbreviation for Media Access Control) to a physical medium such as an optical fiber or copper cable. “PPDU” is an acronym for PLCP Protocol Data Unit, where “PLCP” is an acronym for “Physical Layer Convergence Protocol.”)
Though certainly useful, RSSI does not necessarily consistently serve as an accurate indicator of suitable wireless coverage. For example, wireless interactions with a wireless local area network typically include both transmissions from as well as transmissions to an access point for the wireless local area network. RSSI, however, only represents, to some degree, the signal as received at the portable electronic device. If the access point is not able to receive transmissions from the portable electronic device as well as the latter can receive the transmissions of the former, RSSI at the portable electronic device can provide an overly optimistic characterization of the actual coverage experience.